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LEOMINSTER -- Central Mass. Baseball -- formally known as Leominster Babe Ruth -- is in the same boat as so many other baseball programs.

Low participation rates are hurting the overall product on the field.

"Over the last six or seven years we've dropped," Central Mass. Baseball President Jeff Dedeian said on Thursday at McLaughlin Park in Leominster. "It used to be

over 300 (players), then we dropped to 275, and now we're about down to 225. It's because kids just aren't playing baseball. Some kids just are playing high school and not playing both. We set this league up to benefit the kids that play AAU. We don't play on Saturdays, we play late on Sundays.

"AAU is hurting us, 100 percent. Some of it is good AAU, some of it is bad AAU. In the long run it's about kids playing the game and being coached up right. But in the other aspect of it, a guy just throwing an AAU team together just to play, and a league like this loses 13-14 kids, that doesn't help the cause for all the other kids here."

The decline is numbers has been an ongoing problem for a multitude of reasons, not just AAU, according to Dedeian.

"Let's go back to the reason why we kind of got out of Babe Ruth," he said. "We were struggling with our in-house league of keeping kids around because we only have four or five teams in each league and it was weak. It got to the point where AAU was picking up a little bit and then Babe Ruth took away a couple of our towns.

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Everyone says it was about all-stars, but it has nothing to do with all-stars. It had to do with the in-house league needing to be more competitive to keep the good players around.

"We got out of Babe Ruth and called it Central Mass. Baseball because our goal -- and it still is our goal -- is to make it a complete Central Mass. League."

The program got rid of its affiliation with Babe Ruth three years ago.

"The goal was to separate into one league where we didn't have any (oversight that) told what you couldn't do and what you could do," Dedeian said. "The all-star tournaments were becoming just another regular-season game and players weren't playing because of vacations or commitments to other AAU teams. So we just decided that it was better to just let kids play instead of shutting the seasons down on June 20 and saying the season is over because we have to get ready for all-stars."

When the program broke away from Babe Ruth, it was prospering. Now, the number of players continues to plummet.

"The first year we did it we had 22 teams. It was great, competitive and it was fun," Dedeian said. "Not that it's not fun now, but the problem we're running into is the lack of incoming kids who are coming in at all levels for all our towns. The last couple of years the incoming kids have been between 10 and 15, where in the past we'd have a 13-year-old tryout and have 40-something kids, so it's watering down our league by not having kids play. I don't know where that starts and where that comes from, but we need to find a way to bring in more towns and making the league even stronger.

"And we need to find a way to keep kids who are playing in Little League now or quit when they are 10. How do we get those kids to stay in Little League and then come to us and make this a fun, great league?"

At Central Mass., kids play roughly 30 games per season at the 13- and 14-year-old level, says Dedeian.

"In the 15-16 level, we don't start until the high school season is over," Dedeian said. "This year we played 15 regular-season games, but we got into a double-elimination playoffs, so we still played those 18 games. It's tough at that level because you can't play during the high school season."

Central Mass. Baseball fall ball begins on Sept. 10. Games will be played on Saturdays and Sundays. Cost is $75 for at least 10 games. This league is for incoming players ages 13-15, along with any 12s looking to play on the bigger diamond.

Registration will be held Sept. 6, from 5-7 p.m., at McLaughlin Park in Leominster. Tryouts will be announced at a later date.

"We're looking to be the biggest and best league that we can possibly be with every possible town that we can possibly bring in," Dedeian said. "We want kids to show up and play, and play in a league that's competitive. I'm not saying that we're the best league ever. I'm not saying we're a league that everyone needs to come watch, but I want it to be for the two or three years that the kids play here, I want them to say, 'I had fun playing in this league and it was competitive baseball.'"

Dedeian, however, says that this program isn't going anywhere.

"It's going to be here," he said. "I'll probably end up being here for a long period of time, but we want to keep it and put it at a level that -- I'm not saying it's at an AAU level or elite-team level, but a level where you show up every night and not having parents sitting up in the stands for a three-and-a-half hour game because we turned it into a bonafide rec league. We've always said we're not going to be a rec league, and we're not a rec league. We are a competitive baseball league where kids learn and just play the game to the best of their abilities, no matter what their abilities are."

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